Garfield, Morris and the Aristocats get the fame, but look to the origins of today's furry felines and you find "lybica," a Middle Eastern wildcat. Domestic cats can be traced to wild progenitors that interbred well over 100,000 years ago, new research indicates.

Much has been written about the stretched U.S. military in Iraq, but there has been less focus on State Department diplomats who have been thrust into the most dangerous posting of their careers. More than 1,300 U.S. diplomats have served in Iraq since 2003, and three have been killed there.

The virulent form of avian influenza known as H5N1 that has killed millions of birds and 128 humans has been on scientists' radar for nine years and has yet to arrive in the USA. But if it does, the Department of Agriculture and poultry producers are ready.

Some 3.5 million of today's Ashkenazi Jews about 40% of the total Ashkenazi population are descended from just four women, a genetic study indicates. Those women apparently lived somewhere in Europe within the last 2,000 years.

The United States is the largest supplier of weapons to developing nations, delivering more than $9.6 billion in arms to Near East and Asian countries last year. The weapons being sold range from ammunition to tanks, combat aircraft, missiles and submarines.

The State Department stated its disapproval Wednesday of Israel's extension of a security fence into a large West Bank settlement near Jerusalem and called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from several West Bank towns. The fence extension has led to Palestinian accusations of a land grab.

What concerns counterterrorism experts is that tactics that once prompted fierce ideological debates within radical circles suicide and attacks on civilians are both classically defined in Islam as sins are now more likely to be embraced by young men.